Vita e Pensiero

During the seventeenth century, the choice of the leaders of the Order of Friars Minor was a constant cause of internal conflicts involving both the lay and ecclesiastical powers. The study of the competition for the governing positions of the Franciscans gives us a very different picture from the one given to us by contemporary literature and much of historiography...

The mission to Kongo and Angola that Propaganda Fide entrusted to Italian Capuchins began in the 1640s. The reports drawn up by the missionaries in the following fifty years are useful to define the true meaning of mission. Even before setting out on a long and dangerous sea voyage, the missionaries had to deal with a constantly changing political situation in Europe that strongly affected the preparations for the ongoing mission...

Our paper offers a critical edition of the Letter to the Italian Princes written by Timoteo Maffei, a Veronese humanist and Lateran canon regular (ca. 1415-1470), who was archbishop of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) from 1467 to 1470...

Paola Foschi, Domenico Cerami, Renzo Zagnoni, Monasteri benedettini nella diocesi di Bologna (secoli VII-XV), a cura di Paola Foschi (Silvia Carraro) - «Non ore orandum solo» nelle vicende del monastero di Santa Grata «in Columnellis» a Bergamo, a cura di Mariarosa Cortesi (Caterina Cappuccio) - Renzo Fantappiè, Eresia e Inquisizione a Prato (secoli XII-XIV) (Riccardo Parmeggiani) - Daniele Solvi, Il canone agiografico di san Bernardino (post 1460) (Marco Guida)

Founded in 989 by the new princely dynasty of Salerno, Santa Maria de Domno is the church of the Prince, a recipient of substantial donations and the mirror of a new mentality, expressing an ideology of power stemming from the complex overlap between administrative structure, personal ties and economic implications...

The nunnery of Santa Verdiana was founded in Florence at the end of the fourteenth century. The archive, following the suppressions operated at different times, is now preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Florence...

The life of cardinal Tarlati, spanning over the second half of the 14th century, shows a threefold course of action, both political, ecclesiastical and cultural. In politics he defended the lordship of the Tarlati in Alta Valtiberina, whom he tried to protect, in vain, from Florence by forming an alliance with Siena, within the context of the submission of the Comune of Arezzo to Florence (1384-1385)...

This paper, based on ongoing research, outlines the conscious choice of the Portuguese cleric Lope de Almeida to support the Spanish Monarchy before he became Philip II’s confessor. Our aim is to examine, for the first time, unpublished documents relating to his journeys to Italy – in particular to the Republic of Venice – between 1575 and 1577...